Cyclic Behavior of Smooth Steel Reinforcing Bars: Experimental Analysis and Modeling Issues

This article presents the results of an experimental campaign on the cyclic behavior of smooth steel bars, used as internal reinforcement of existing Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures; the stress-strain relationship is analyzed for different values of L/D ratio, where L is the stirrup spacing and D is the longitudinal bar diameter. Most of the experimental tests concerned smooth bars with L/D ratios ranging between 5 and 100. The analysis of the test results is complemented by some comparisons of the curves obtained by experimental tests on smooth steel bars with those obtained by experimental tests on ribbed steel bars. The theoretical predictions obtained by existing models available in the literature on the cyclic behavior of ribbed steel bars are then discussed. Our review of these formulations underlines their range of applicability as well as their potential to predict the damage and buckling that occur for different L/D ratios of the smooth steel bars.